Sixties Teen

Sixties Teen

My husband, star of my epic love life, “Hey, Hon. Let's get Sirius.”

“Let's see. We have been married going on twenty-eight years. We've combined our retirement benefits. We have been looking into purchasing adjoining cemetery plots. How much more serious can we get?”

He who claims to love me, “No, I mean the XM streaming service 'Sirius'. Might save us overall on our entertainment package.”

“I can barely operate the TV now. Change it again and I'll never be able to run the remote control. What happened to the good old days of clicking on the tube and flipping channels? I do like the options we have now of recording what we want then watching being able to skip commercials.”

The one that tends to all my needs, “That's becoming obsolete. We need to stay up with the new devices or be left in the dark ages.”

“That's why I have you as my tech support. I could never navigate the modern world without you. I am still computer illiterate and if I can't copy and paste I could never post a story or get anything published. If you expect me to be your sugar mamma so you can fully retire then no new technology. Things change so fast I can't keep up. Why, when I was a girl...”

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A Baby Boomer born in 1951, I was Romper-Stomper-Bomper-Boo 'Romper Room' age when my family got our first TV, a big stand alone box with a small screen and mysterious tubes lined up in the back behind a cardboard protection panel. 'Howdy Doody' and 'Captain Kangaroo' rounded out my education and entertainment menu.

A little later came 'The Flintstones' and 'The Jetsons'. If prehistoric to futuristic failed to impress there was always the violence of Saturday morning cartoons: 'Bugs Bunny'; 'Tom and Jerry'; 'The Road Runner'; 'Quick-Draw McGraw'; 'Dudley Doo-Right'.

The first ever rock-n-roll song I heard, maybe even owned by my older sister, was 'Johnny B. Goode', a 45 vinyl recording played on a small suitcase sized record player. The transistor radio was a new invention we listened to for other songs often enough to learn the words. Even my then five-year-old brother remembers listening to KA-a-aY-X-O-Kay / St. Looouis when we lived in southern Illinois. Of course, Granny let us watch 'American Bandstand' with her.

I watched live as 'The Beatles' descended from the plane arriving in America and performing 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' on The Ed Sullivan Show. My seventh-grade girl friends and I would sing all their songs and other hits by pop stars during recess. I don't recall ever having a fancy console stereo with turn table and speakers so it must still have been AM radio I learned from.

In America we went from John Glenn orbiting the earth to Neil Armstrong taking a giant leap for mankind on the moon in the sixties so there must have been computers. They filled a room but it took a computer scientist to operate one. I do remember once having a 'computer dance' in high school. We filled out forms, sent them away to the lab and were matched with a perfect date by a computer. Can't think who my match was but must have been a real loser since he got me.

Other turbulent national and world events were played out nightly on our black and white big box TV. Presidential election between Nixon and JFK, watching little Caroline standing with her folks; Berlin Wall went up; Cuban Missile Crisis; Marilyn Monroe found dead; Civil rights movement, four workers mysteriously killed; four young Sunday School girls killed in a church bombing; Martin Luther King, Jr. 'I Have a Dream' speech; JFK assassinated, three-year-old Jr. standing at attention as casket went past; Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald; far away war in place called Vietnam; Cassius Clay became heavy-weight champion; race riots in Watts after Malcolm X assassinated.

Later we got a color television set. Vietnam War in living color; assassinations of MLK,Jr. and Robert Kennedy; Democratic convention protests; Star Trek; first Super Bowl; Laugh-In; My Lai massacre; Manson murders in Hollywood; Woodstock; man on the moon.

Those were only the highlights. I'm sure I missed a few. Luckily, my family lived in a Mid-west bubble and were only affected by the tragedy of my sister's death in a car accident.

Somehow I came of age without much technology. Phones were still tethered to a wall and had rotary dials. No answering machines, one raced to get to it before it stopped ringing. No remote controls for TV, we (meaning the kids of the family) had to get off our comfy seats and select one of the three channels on the dial. No microwaves. Had to stand at a stove and cook. Think we had a roll-around dishwasher that we seldom used because there was always something piled on top of it. We three girls were the designated dish doers.

Cars had no seat belts. (Would my sister have survived if not thrown out of vehicle? It was pretty smashed in.) My first car was a stick shift I had my boyfriend drive around for me. Had to hand crank the windows up or down.

Being a teen in the sixties had fond memories, too...

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“What have you been doing, Sweetheart?”

“Oh, sorry, guess I must have spaced out there for a little while reminiscing about the good old days before we were inundated with so much technology I can't keep up with. You do realize I can't even name most of the things that have been developed in the last, oh, say, twenty-five years at least. CDs, DVDs, floppy discs, hard drives, modems, routers, flash drives, smart phones and on and on...”

“No, what I am talking about is how many nostalgia credits have you been sucking up?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don't you remember since we got those memory implants during our mandatory 'Welcome to Medicare' doctor visits, the thought police monitor all our nostalgic moments and tax us on them. You are only allotted so many per month or you are in danger of being labeled senile and unleashing another maelstrom of regulations. I may have to check on the details again but you can go back say twenty-five years without too much penalty.”

“Twenty-five years doesn't even get me back to our courtship and wedding when I fell in love with my sensitive wild man.”

“We can afford going those extra three years once in awhile but if you have been back before technology affected us then I am afraid you may have broken our bank account.”

“Oh, no! You can't be serious!”